Thank You for Smoking?

“Thank You for Smoking…?”

Peter Brimelow brings to light an interesting idea in his essay “Thank You for Smoking…?” Brimelow’s purpose of his essay is to defend smoking. He provides the audience with information that is worthy of their consideration and valid enough to make them think twice about how they stand on the issue of smoking. Unfortunately, some flaws in Brimelow’s technique distract the audience from his message that smoking is not as unhealthy as it appears. A few mistakes transform his work from a well-written argumentative essay to an unsuccessful attempt to spread his beliefs. What started as an essay to rouse new views on the issue of smoking swiftly lost all merit and became a means to assail the people in opposition of the author’s views.

Brimelow makes a gallant effort to prove his major claim, or main idea (McFadden). He wants to get the audience to concur with him that smoking is not an altogether unhealthy habit (Brimelow 141). However, mistakes in his essay begin with his major claim statement. When Brimelow writes that “smoking might be, in some ways, good for you” (141), he already puts doubts in the minds of the audience. Instead of feeling that the author is confident about his position on the subject, the audience picks up on the skepticism hidden in the words “might” and “some small ways.” Those qualifiers, or words and phrases that exclude some situations from his major claim (McFadden), leave the audience questioning who it is beneficial for and in what situations.

Brimelow uses warrants, or peoples’ values (McFadden), to get them to coincide with his beliefs. Because Brimelow’s main claim is very disputable, he needs to find some way to catch the attention of the audience a...

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... the mistakes he has made. When his audience looks back on the essay they have just read, his examples and facts about smoking that have been so keenly expressed will be unseen, because the focus will be on the unprofessional fallacies present in his work. In future works, it would be advantageous for Brimelow to be aware of these fallacies and to find a different means of approaching his rebuttal so that another strenuous effort will not be diminished into an unsuccessful attempt to disperse his beliefs.

Works Cited

Brimelow, Peter. “Thank You for Smoking…?” The Genre of Argument. Ed. Irene L.

Clark. Boston: Thomson Heinle, 1998. 141-143.

Clark, Irene L. The Genre of Argument. Boston: Thomson Heinle, 1998.

McFadden, James. Introduction to Toulmin Method. Lecture. Sept. 13 & 14, 2003.

Buena Vista University. Storm Lake, IA.